Senate Democrats Want to Take Your Car

While House Transportation Committee Chair James Oberstar talks about spending a lot of money, the Senate transportation chair, John D. Rockefeller IV, has a different agenda: he wants to reduce people’s driving. He thinks the next transportation reauthorization bill should include goals of reducing per-capita driving, reducing transportation-related greenhouse emissions by 40 percent, and reduce the amount of freight carried on highways by 20 percent. (His actual goal is to increase non-highway freight by 10 percent, but since slightly less than a third of freight goes by highway, that works out to a 20 percent reduction in highway shipping.)

The Antiplanner has a few problems with these goals. First, several states, including Oregon and Washington, have set goals of reducing per-capita driving, but none have succeeded. Per-capita driving has declined only when gas prices dramatically increased (a 40-cent-per-gallon increase in gas taxes wouldn’t be enough) or incomes dramatically fell due to a recession.

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New Theme

The Antiplanner blog offers several themes — the WordPress term for general appearance — including Cars, Ocean, Trees, and Plain. Today I’ve added a new theme, OpenAir, which uses a photograph as a background. If it does not immediately appear when you visit this site, you can choose it from the list of themes on the sidebar.

Like the other themes, OpenAir was originally designed by someone else, in this case, by Richard Dows, an English web designer. I’ve modified it here and there and will probably tweak it more in the future. In addition, I expect I will change the photograph from time to time. I don’t really understand cascading style sheets, so my modifications are somewhat hit and miss.
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If this theme doesn’t work on your computer, you can go back to the Plain theme or one of the others. As always, I appreciate any feedback you may have.

APTA: Strategically Late?

Today the Antiplanner features a guest post from faithful ally Tom Rubin.

The American Public Transportation Association (APTA) publishes transit ridership data every quarter. According to APTA’s web site, “First quarter data are available about July 15 each year; second quarter about October 15; third quarter about January 15; and fourth quarter about April 20.”

July 15 is 106 days after the end of the first quarter. Maybe I’m just growing older, but I don’t recall it taking that long in the past to compile the data; after all, what is involved is having a lot of transit agencies fill out forms with three months of data for each of the modes they operate and get that to APTA. There are always some slowpokes, but that seems a bit much. In fact, I was looking at this page not all that many weeks ago and I could have sworn it said the delay was about two-and-one-half-months, not three-and-one-half.

So, falling back on my auditor training, I decided to search out other factoids that could cast some light on this.

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Amtrak President: High-Speed Rail “Unrealistic”

True high-speed rail — trains going 150 mph or more on newly built tracks — would be “prohibitively expensive” in the United States, says Amtrak President Joseph Boardman. Testifying before the Illinois House Railroad Industry Committee, Boardman said that it makes more sense to improve existing tracks so trains can run at up to 110 mph.

“It’s really not about the speed,” Boardman reportedly said. “It’s about reduced travel times and more frequency.” He added that 110 mph “is double the national speed limit” of 55 mph on highways. Apparently he hasn’t heard that this national speed limit was repealed a mere 22 years ago. (Or maybe he is privy to a plan to re-establish this limit.)

Few media reports about high-speed rail note that a top speed of 110 mph works out to an average speed, including scheduled stops, of just 60 to 75 mph. Between New York and Washington, Amtrak’s regular Northeast Corridor trains, for example, have top speeds of 110 but average 70 mph, whereas the Acela has a top speed of 135 but averages less than 85 mph.

At today’s speed limits, most people can easily average more than 50 mph on intercity freeways, including stops for gas and food, so rail’s advantage is not that great — especially when you consider that your car will go when you want it, will take you directly to your final destination, and will be available for sidetrips along the way.

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Reauthorization Next Year — Maybe

Reauthorization of federal transportation funding, scheduled for 2009, will probably be delayed until 2010, says Senator Mark Warner. Apparently, Congress has too many higher priorities to take care of this year.

Congress historically authorizes transportation funding (most of which comes out of federal gas taxes) for six years. This gives it an opportunity to change direction and gives members of Congress opportunities to raise campaign funds from interest groups whose businesses depend on federal funding.

One reason for the delay, as reported in Congressional Quarterly (on-line version not available), is that the House Transportation Committee’s computer can’t handle all of the earmarks that members want to put into the bill. The computer keeps crashing.

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Is Performance-Based Budgeting the Answer?

The state of California faces a $42 billion budget deficit, and a writer for the Sacramento Bee suggests that the solution is performance-based budgeting. In other words, set “clear and measurable goals and objectives” for each government program and “hold managers accountable” to those goals.

Sounds like a great idea . . . except the federal government already tried it and it didn’t work. In 1993, Congress passed the Government Performance Results Act (GPRA). In essence, GPRA directed every federal agency to set “results-oriented goals” and then to write annual reports revealing how well they met those goals. The only practical effect of this law is to add to the red tape that agency officials must deal with every year.

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Ranking the States

Someone asked the Antiplanner if anyone has ever ranked the restrictiveness of land-use regulation by state. I don’t know of any such ranking, but I pointed out that regulation has several dimensions. Spatial regulations try to control where development can take place. Time regulations effectively limit how quickly developments can take place.

Another time dimension has to do with how long regulations have been in place. An urban-growth boundary drawn last year isn’t as restrictive as one drawn thirty years ago. Finally, land-ownership patterns can effectively restrict development even if there are no overt legal restrictions.

Given that complication, here is my estimate of ranking, with states of roughly similar regulation grouped together. Any and all comments are welcome, especially if they can help make this ranking more precise.

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The Next Boondoggle

A Washington Post writer observes that a roundtrip Amtrak ticket from DC to New York is $140 or more, while there are buses that go the same route for only $20 each way. Unlike Amtrak, the buses have leather seats and free WiFi, and they take only an hour longer than the train.

The Antiplanner made much the same point in an op ed recently published in the Cleveland Plain-Dealer: All American taxpayers will share the cost of a national high-speed rail network, but its use will be limited mainly to the wealthy and those whose employers pay the cost.

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“Interstates paid for themselves out of gas taxes, and most Americans use them almost every day,” says the op ed. “Moderate or high-speed rail would require everyone to subsidize trains that would serve only a small elite.” Is it ironic or just inevitable that the Democratic Party, which likes to to think of itself as the party of the common people, supports policies that take from the poor and middle-class and give to the rich?

Portland Developer Challenges the Political Class

At 70, developer Joe Weston has seen it all in Portland, and done much of it himself. In the 1960s, he noticed that many east-Portland single-family neighborhoods were actually zoned multi-family. So he started buying two or three adjacent homes, which he ripped down and replaced with “Weston specials”: two-story, apartment buildings that resembled cheap motels.

Today, he owns 2,800 units of such apartments. But he is also one of the main developers of the heavily subsidized Pearl District. He just opened one of Portland’s newest condo towers, and he owns many office buildings. Before the crash, his real estate empire was valued at $300 million.

With his focus on dense housing, you would think he would be in the thick of Portland politics. So it was surprising to read a recent letter castigating Portland’s mayor and city commission for being out of touch with the public.

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